Austin’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Austin’s biological maternal grandparents

Austin is a son of an adoptee who reached out about eight months ago for help finding his mother’s biological parents. She had passed away, so he was unable to get his mother’s original birth registration, but Austin had a few bits of non-identifying information and had taken an AncestryDNA test with hopes of uncovering more.

I took a look at Austin’s maternal matches and found that most were connected to the O’Brien family, which was good, because that was his maternal grandmother’s last name. Some of his paternal matches were even connected to the O’Briens as well. I started mapping out the large east coast families, and finding common ancestors and working back down. I found a family descended from the common ancestors of Austin’s matches that had moved to the city where Austin’s mother was born in Ontario, and found a woman who would have been around the right age Austin estimated his maternal grandmother was.

Fortunately, my fellow genealogist friend Derek actually had this family in one of his research tree, and he was able to tell me the names of the siblings, thanks to his prior research.

Though Austin’s presumed biological maternal grandmother had passed away several decades ago, she did have other children, so Austin reached out to his presumed half aunt Kelly, and she agreed to test to prove our theories.

Time went by and eventually Austin’s maternal grandmother’s identity was confirmed thanks to Kelly testing.

We also hoped that Kelly testing would help a bit with finding matches from Austin’s maternal grandfather’s side, which we had no information on. However, nearly all of Austin’s maternal matches also matched Kelly, which was expected since they were from an endogamous province. Even matches that didn’t match Kelly were in common with the O’Brien matches.

More time went by and I had an idea. I asked Austin if he would be able to help Kelly send me a collaborator invite to her DNA matches so I would be able to see the actual shared centimorgans of her shared matches with Austin.

Kelly sent me the invite and I got to work. I already had a spreadsheet of Austin’s matches and notes of who I thought might be from his maternal grandfather’s side, but seeing Kelly’s matches really helped. Indeed she was matching most of the O’Brien matches, and sometimes more than Austin did, as expected since she was a generation up, but sometimes Austin was matching the O’Brien matches higher. I started to wonder if perhaps he had a ‘second helping’ of O’Brien DNA somewhere up the line due to the endogamy or possibly pedigree collapse.

I started working on some of the matches that were either very low or non-matchers to Kelly and finding their most recent common ancestors. I then worked back down the tree, and found that the family of interest, the Jackson family, was fairly closely related to the O’Briens. It was making sense why most of Austin’s maternal matches were also matching Kelly, as the Jacksons were closely related through one of his maternal grandmother’s parents.

I realized the Jacksons had also moved to the same city as the O’Briens, about a decade prior, and were living very close by.

The sibling set that Austin’s maternal grandfather was from was large, and there were nearly a dozen sons that were potential contenders. At this point, without additional DNA testers, we could not determine further with DNA which son was going to be Austin’s maternal grandfather. Additionally, all but two of the brothers were deceased.

Austin decided to reach out to a man named Jeb who was active on Ancestry and whose father was one of the many Jackson siblings. Jeb was likely twice related to Austin. After Austin and I explained the search and the situation, Jeb pinpointed one of his uncles it was highly likely to be based on family lore and circumstance. He shared a picture of the uncle and the resemblance to Austin was remarkable.

After this, Austin was very satisfied with his search, and knowing that his maternal grandfather was one of the Jackson brothers was enough for him. He is happy to have found his mother’s biological family and to have made some positive connections to newfound family members.